17 year old college student raising awareness of tics

Posted Tue 6th Jun 2023 at 11:38
by Pippa Hiles

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Read this fantastic assembly that Pippa Hiles wrote to educate her peers

"Hey, my name is Pippa, and I’m a year 12 student. I will pre-warn you that there may be swearing, inappropriate gestures and comments that may seem out of place in today’s assembly, but all will be explained momentarily. I’m standing up here to talk to you about tics and hopefully, help you understand them a bit more.

In short, tics are involuntary movements, sounds, words, and sometimes even whole phrases and it shouldn’t surprise you to now know that I have them.

I tic. Involuntary genuinely means that I have no control over them. I have an urge to tic, so I can feel them coming, a bit like how you know you’re about to sneeze just before it happens. But like a sneeze, you can’t exactly hold it in, even if you say pineapple 7 times or whatever the internet claims will stop  the sneeze. Again, like a sneeze, the tic comes back, whether it be a few seconds later or a few hours.

I have motor tics, which is anything to do with movement, and vocal tics which is anything that uses my voice. Within motor tics, I have copropraxia, which is rude gestures, and corprographia which is writing or drawing rude things. Within vocal tics, I also have coprolalia or swearing tics, and this is the part you will commonly hear associated with Tourettes. A very small percentage of people with Tourettes actually have swearing tics, and even then, it’s not all about shouting those words. Plus, there is more to ticcing than saying and doing rude things.

People with tics are all very different. Firstly, because we are all people, and people in general are different and secondly because tics can vary massively between people. Some with tics only have small motor tics and if you weren’t looking too hard, it’s likely you wouldn’t see it. Other people have tics you simply can’t ignore, whether that be shouting or large motor tics. And most people are anywhere in between.

Because everyone’s tics are so different, everyone has their own way they’d like people to react. For the most part, everyone agrees that ignoring a person’s tics is best. For a large majority of my tics, that doesn’t change. However, like you’ve heard so far, I can tic some pretty funny things, and I prefer for people to laugh at those things if they think they are funny. Personally it’s all about whether you are laughing with me or at me; it’s never nice to be laughed at. In short, it’s all a question of asking the person with tics and being understanding and accepting of whatever they have decided.

And yes, tics suck. They aren’t an excuse to swear at my teachers and get away with it. I don’t like swearing as it is, but it is a part of my daily life. And some days, I can’t go more than 10 seconds without having a swearing tic or a tic in general. Coprolalia doesn’t just involve swear words, it ranges from just being rude to being highly offensive. I’m talking about the stuff that would get me cancelled on Twitter for sure. I’d like to add, I also don’t believe anything I tic. I might think your drawing or whatever is amazing, but my tics are likely to say it’s bad because that’s just how they work.

When I go around in my day-to-day life, I am constantly worried about what I might say or do next. It’s one thing to swear at your friend in a lunch break, it’s a completely different thing to swear at the old lady down the Tesco cereal aisle. I’m also constantly tired, physically exhausted. Mentally exhausted too. And where a person without tics would take a day off and slow down when they feel like that, I’m unable to. Unfortunately, being tired makes my tics worse, and I can’t just press a button to get them to stop. So I’m often burnt out and find myself being really low on energy.

And even more than that, my tics leave me in near constant pain. Slamming desks with my hands has bruised my arms and shouting out, or even just talking all the time makes me lose my voice as if I had just been to a music festival.

That’s the thing with all this. Yea, it sucks. And any of my friends would tell you that I’m not always in such a good mood about it but we found the best way to cope was to laugh about it. Not laugh at everything. Me blinking rapidly isn’t funny, and me shouting chicken really loudly does get boring, but when my tics are contextual and it’s appropriate to, nothing helps more than having a little laugh about it. It can be hard to find positives when things are tough to deal with, but trust me, they are always there.

I’ve become a bit of a comedian; well my tics have become a comedian. They can do accents I can’t. Think of jokes that no one has ever thought of, sometimes for good reason. And there is also nothing funnier than having the Twitter whistle notification as a tic and watching everyone check their phones thinking it might just be them. Like I said, it sucks, but there are always positives to be found.

So now you know me, and you know what tics are. There are only a few things left to say. If you have any questions about tics, just come up to me and ask. I’m normally pretty easily identifiable by the dinosaur ties I wear, or maybe the fact that I’m saying and doing random things as I walk round school. But don’t be afraid to ask me something, the best way to learn is to be open and to talk about these things. If that seems too scary, (I know it probably would be for me), there is so much online that talks about tics. Tourettes Action is a very cool charity with an informative website. And online, there’s dozens of creators on things like TikTok and YouTube that all give their own unique perspective on what it’s like to live with tics.

So, if you see someone in public who appears to be ticcing, don’t stare. I’m sure if that was you, you wouldn’t want anyone staring. People with tics can’t control them anymore than they can control how you react to them. I hope this assembly today has made it a little easier for you to react in a better way.

Thanks for listening".

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